A bleak vision of adolescence: The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis, reviewed

Bret Easton Ellis’s novels were my literary gateway drug when I was young, the stylised bleakness of his debut Less Than Zero a model for my own writerly aspirations. He was a wunderkind. The fact that he’d written his first novel while still a teenager seemed incredible to me as I read and re-read it: a book with little plot but with so much life.

The Shards can be usefully thought of as both a prequel to Less Than Zero and a presentation of the atmosphere and circumstances that brought that novel into being. Ellis has spent much of his career exploring the territory between fiction and autobiography. Lunar Park (2005) was a kind of faux autobiography, while Imperial Bedrooms (2010) followed the semi-autobiographical protagonist from Less Than Zero into middle age. Now, instead of Clay Easton, the narrator of The Shards is called Bret Easton Ellis, although it would be a mistake to think this brings the novel closer to something like historical truth.